A Certain Smile

by Judith Michael

  "That should please you. All that work for your company."

  They sat at a small table set with china, chopsticks and a steaming teapot. Li filled their cups. "It pleases the part of me that likes making a good living, but there is also the part of me that does not want to lose all of the past."

  "But you didn't like the past."

  "Much of it."

  "What is it you want to keep?"

  "A belief in art and poetry: glories that have nothing to do with money or muscle. A belief that we're not responsible for what our country was in the past, and not completely to blame for what it is becoming today."

  "That's very bitter."

  "Oh, I do not mean to whine. It is just that I am not. . . how is it you say it in America? Politically correct. And sometimes that makes life difficult. Shall I order for us?"

  "Yes. Could we have lazijiding and mogu dufu?''

  He smiled broadly. "Anything you can pronounce, we can eat." He felt her studying him as he ordered, and he said, "What is it?"

  "You haven't been looking behind us today. Is that because you think there's no one there?"

  "I thought we were not going to talk about that."

  "But I can't help thinking about it. How such a tiny thing, delivering a letter, can spread out and put people in danger . . ."

  "This sounds like a James Bond movie," Li said lightly.

  "It was real enough in Beijing to worry you."

  "Did I seem worried?"

  "Yes. Even though you were trying not to."

  "Ah, already you know me too well," he said, and smiled, making it a jest. "Well, it is real but not dangerous. It is what I told you: an annoyance."

  "Sheng thinks it's serious, doesn't he? You started looking behind us after we met him. So he must have warned you."

  "He did," Li said, surprised that she had made that connection.

  "And he thought you'd be harmed, and he would, too, and maybe your company? All because you're with me." She pushed away her plate. "We have to go back to Beijing. I can't put you at risk; it isn't fair. I'll go home to America but you'll be stuck here."

  "No one can judge that better than 1.1 told you: with your president coming here, they will do no more than keep track of you. Miranda, this is my home; I know its safe places and its treacherous ones. You must let me judge whether I am in danger or not."

  She met his eyes, and Li knew from the racing of his heart how passionate his voice had been, perhaps desperate. He would not let her go. And now she knew it.

  After a moment, she said, "I don't really want to go back to Beijing right away. But the minute you think there is danger ..."

  "I will tell you. I promise that. And now we will not talk about it anymore. I should not burden you with problems when you have your own work to think about. Tell me about it; what did you do yesterday?"

  "It doesn't feel like a burden. It feels like trust."

  He was taken aback and, strangely, filled with sadness. What is this, he thought, why do I feel this? To cover his silence, he reached out to serve them, but Miranda was ahead of him. For the first time she was the one to spoon portions onto their plates, and to Li's sadness was added a deep pleasure at the natural way she did it.

  "You look very sad," she said, and Li realized that after years of schooling himself to turn a bland and noncommital face to the world, suddenly he was becoming open again, his face and voice betraying his emotions, shattering his protective shell. But there is a freedom in it that I have not felt for a long time. As long as it is only with Miranda . . .

  "I did feel sadness," he said, "because I suddenly realized how few people could say, as you just did, that they have my trust."

  "You don't trust people?"

  "I do not allow myself to trust them."

  Miranda shook her head as if she could not, ever, understand that. The waitress filled their glasses with beer and they ate in silence until Miranda said, "Where did you learn English?"

  "In school. The authorities assigned different languages to different classes and mine was given English."

  "You didn't choose it?"

  "In those days we were not allowed to choose anything. That is all changing now."

  "How old were you when you began?"

  "Seven. A good time to begin, when our memories are sponges. And when I was ten I discovered the wonders of western Hterature; from that time on, I fell in love with Shakespeare and Euripides, with Trol-lope and Dickens, Cervantes, Eliot, Rousseau, Swift—"

  "You could get all those books?"

  "They were my father's. He left four boxes of books when he returned to America. All of them had his name written inside, sometimes in his handwriting and sometimes in others'. 'Merry Christmas, dearest John, from Mother and Dad.' Things like that. My favorite is from Aunt Mildred; it says, 'This is for the times you want to spit at the world, John; there's nothing like a few Shakespearean murders and betrayals to make you feel better about your own life.' I would have liked to know Aunt Mildred."

  "So would I," Miranda said, smiling. "Do your children speak English?"

  "Yes, very well. English is the only truly world language and young people, if they are ambitious, know they must learn it. Now tell me about your work. I asked you about it, remember?"

  "Yes, but there's so much to talk about..."

  And that was the wonder of it, Li thought as Miranda described her collaboration the day before with Yun Chen and a late-afternoon meeting at the Baoxiang Woolen Mills. They had so much to talk about, so much to learn and share and build upon.

  To what end?

  It doesn't matter, he thought. Or, at least, it is too early to matter.

  "... goats," Miranda was saying. "You have the best in the world, near the Gobi Desert."

  "You've studied goats?" Li asked, diverted and amused. "Of course I know that's where cashmere yam comes from, but why do you smdy them?"

  "To learn everything about the yam so I'll know what it can and can't do in a design."

  "Strange," Li mused. "I like cashmere sweaters; you'd think I would have asked a few questions about how they're made. Well, tell me about goats."

  They ate slowly and Li listened to Miranda, taking pleasure in the sound of her voice and the eagerness in her face as she saw his interest. She described the combing of goats in the spring, the washing of the fleece, the dying and spinning, the knitting, mostly on machines, the fraudulent practice of mixing coarse hairs with fine underbelly ones to make cheaper, inferior products.

  "The most expensive pieces are made only from the underbelly hairs, and by hand, on knitting frames, and monitors check them all the time, the tension of the yam, the shape, the size, the evenness of the stitches, the tightness of buttonholes, everything at once. And the monitors at Baoxiang are the best I've seen. They know that without them the whole process could fall apart, and they think it's terrific that they're so important."

  Surprised, Li said, "Did they tell you that?"

  "Of course not. When would a Chinese man or woman say anything personal to me? I saw it in their faces and the way they worked and the way they talked about their work. They're proud of themselves."

  "And you liked that."

  "It made them seem human."

  "Do you have many friends?" he asked abruptly.

  Her eyes widened. "Of course."

  "Many?"

  "As many as I need. We're lucky to have any friends, I think; we're all so busy and wrapped up in our own lives. There are a lot of people I see now and then ... not good friends, but good enough. And I'm with my parents two or three times a week; it's good for the children to be close to them."

  He heard the thread of defensiveness in her voice, and would have liked to ask her about it— good enough for what? —but he let it go. "I have two close friends," he said musingly, "a man I've known since university, and a woman my mother's age, who is very wise and dear to me. Of course I know dozens of other people, acquaintances, a few closer than the rest."r />
  "Why are there only two really close ones?" Miranda asked.

  "Because it is easier to be alone than to try to make oneself understood."

  "Oh, how snobbish that sounds."

  "You mean elitist. Well, if I am, is that so bad?"

  "It is if you're lonely."

  And then he understood her. Good enough to stave ojf loneliness, to share a meal, to test an idea, to fill the silent hours of the night. Their eyes met and he made a movement to touch her arm, but stopped himself before it was more than a rippling of the muscle. Even if they had been ready for it, it was not proper. Not in public. Not in China.

  The waitress brought the soup, but neither of them reached for it; they sat quietly, looking through the window at the ebb and flow of the busy street. In a few moments the waitress reappeared with a fresh pot

  of tea, and took away the soup. The restaurant emptied. Li roused himself. "We've sat here so long. ... I had hoped to take you to some other sights, but perhaps you would like to relax instead."

  "Yes, thank you for saying that. It's been such a full day, I'd just like to be—^I'd just like to think about it for a while."

  I'd just like to be alone. That was what she had almost said. And she was right, Li thought; they needed to be apart for a little while, to take a breather from the nervousness they had felt all day. His had been below the surface, making him keenly aware of her every movement, and of the two of them together, bending toward each other, then away, like dancers who almost but never quite touch. And Miranda had dropped napkins and her purse, shifted in her chair, rolled chopsticks between her fingers, run her hand through her hair ... in a dozen jittery ways she had shown how conscious she was of traveling with him and how, imperceptibly, they both had moved from friendship to desire.

  "We'll go back to the hotel," he said when they were in the car. "And perhaps a drink before dinner? There is a pleasant bar off the lobby."

  "Yes. Thank you, Li; this has been a wonderful day."

  As she said his name, her voice tightened and she coughed, and Li realized how seldom she used it. Almost never, in fact. As if, he thought with sadness, saying his name reminded her of his foreign-ness.

  In the hotel lobby, she turned to him. "Will they stop following you when I'm gone? When I go home?"

  "I don't know. They have to keep all those surveillance people occupied, you know."

  "What will you do, then? When I'm gone?"

  "I do not think about that. All I am thinking about is having a drink with you, and then dinner."

  She smiled faintly, and turned to go. Li waited until the elevator doors had slid shut behind her, then casually sat in an armchair, waiting. Why? What does it matter whether or not I see whoever is following us? There was no answer to that. He just wanted to know.

  He sat quietly. After almost an hour, he was sure he had picked out two men in business suits who could be the ones following them. There have to be two, he reflected, in case we go to different places. He watched the men skim magazines through smoke rising from cigarettes dangling from their lips, watched them put down the magazines, light new cigarettes fi"om the stubs of the old, pick up newspapers, turn

  pages. Now and then they looked up casually, making a languid survey of the lobby, their glances passing over Li without expression. But he knew they were the ones.

  But knowing which ones they were was useless. He could not stop them; he could not avoid them. They were part of the landscape and there was not one thing he could do about it.

  The hell with it. He stood up. He had a friend to visit and then he would go to his room. Miranda and I have tonight ahead of us, and next to that, nothing matters. We will block out tomorrow and think of nothing but that: the two of us, together, tonight.

  Chapter 6

  Miranda locked the door to her hotel room, kicked off her shoes and took a long breath, glad to be alone. Dropping her clothes on the floor, she put on the terrycloth robe she found hanging in the closet, and sat at a carved table in the window. She wanted to call her family; she needed to hear their voices and be pulled into their lives: out of this one, into theirs. But as she began to dial the hotel operator, she stopped. What was she thinking of? Five o'clock in the afternoon in Xi'an—the same time as Beijing, since, peculiarly, all of China set its clocks to Beijing time—was two o'clock in the morning in Boulder. Her parents, her children, the dog and the cat all would be asleep, and scared to death if the telephone startled them awake. Her parents would spring from their bed. Miranda . . . drugged by Chinese bandits .. . kidnapped. . . imprisoned by communists . .. run over by bicycles .. . lost forever Her children would think... well, what would her children think? Nothing. They would sleep right through it.

  She smiled, picturing them sprawled tangled in their sheets, oblivious to her late-night kiss on forehead and cheek. But even as she smiled, she had a feeling of loss and disconnectedness, as if, far from the orbit of their lives, she was no longer sure who she was.

  Everything is so different, so incredible. . . I want to tell you about —

  No, that wasn't really what she had wanted to say when she rushed to the telephone. The truth was, she had wanted to talk about Li.

  It did not matter that she could anticipate her parents' scowls, and hear their warnings; she still wanted to talk about him. She wanted to hear herself say his name; she wanted to test her feelings by describing

  him. She wanted to make him seem more a part of her Hfe by bringing him into a conversation with home.

  But there was no way she could do it. Not tonight, anyway. And maybe not at all. When it came down to it, she really wasn't sure she wanted to wade through their hostility just to be able to talk about Li.

  "Li," she said aloud, and it was as if she could taste his name on her tongue.

  But that made her jittery, and she began to pace. Her comer room was divided in two by a long mahogany desk with a television set at one end that swiveled to face the bedroom or the sitting room. Miranda flicked on the set and watched a newscast on CNN about upcoming Congressional elections in the United States, then went back to her pacing, circling the two silk couches, the heavily carved cocktail table, the single lamp with a bulb too dim for reading. She stopped at the window on one wall. The hotel was four-sided, built around a lake, but her room faced the front, looking down on a sinuous stream bordered with boulders and animal sculptures nestled in low evergreens. A small bridge spanned the stream, and bright carp darted just below the surface like ghostly orange streamers. It was so perfect, so gentle and harmonious, that she wished Li were with her, to share it.

  But she had just been feeling glad to be alone.

  At the lighted shelf unit across the room, she poured tea from a heavy steel thermos into a porcelain cup painted with gold-rimmed lilies. Carrying the cup, she wandered back to the bedroom and stood looking down at the blouse folded on top of her open suitcase. How could it be so wrinkled, when she had packed so carefully? She picked it up, shook it out, gazed at it critically. Nothing about it pleased her. Even if she ironed it, its everyday utilitarianism would be unchanged. It was a blouse for the office: respectable, neat, relendessly dull. It spoke volumes about duty and repression, and said not one word about a pleasant evening on the town.

  Li would be hurt if she wore it. He would think that she did not care enough about him, or his efforts to make the trip pleasant, to pay any special attention to her appearance.

  Well, that's too bad. As my mother says, All you really need is a clean face.

  Anyway, it was all she had. Everything else was in her hotel room in Beijing.

  She found an ironing board in the closet and set it up. She spread the blouse out, pulled it taut, and positioned the iron above a sleeve. And then stood there. / can't wear it. I really can't. I don't want him to be hurt. And I want to feel special.

  She tossed the blouse back onto the suitcase. Somehow, she had to find something else.

  On her way to breakfast that morning, she h
ad paused at the window display of a women's boutique in the lobby. There had been a blouse with bright flowers, and a dress—some kind of blue—almost iridescent; she had not paid much attention. But the blouse and dress were still in the window when she went downstairs, the shop was still open, and the woman behind the counter, wearing a perfectly cut black dress, said, in perfect English, "Welcome. What may I show you?"

  She looked incredibly old. Her face was a web of fine wrinkles narrowly framed by pure white hair pulled back and twisted into a bun fastened with an ivory comb; her hands were almost translucent, with raised blue veins curving and intersecting like Chinese writing. She came only to Miranda's shoulder, but she stood as erect as a young woman, her face alert, her eyes dark and lively. Miranda liked her. "I'd like to try on that blouse," she said, "and the dress."

  The woman gazed at her. "The blouse I think is not for you. The flowers are too large for your delicate face. I will show you some that would suit you better. The dress would be perfect, though I have others that you might also wish to consider. Please . . ." She pulled back a heavy gold curtain so that Miranda could walk into the dressing room. "One moment." She let the curtain fall as she left.

  The dressing room was large and square, deeply carpeted and furnished with two damask-covered chairs and an antique floor vase filled with huge burnt-orange and gold chrysanthemums. The walls and ceiling were draped in fabric; on one wall gold light sconces flanked a tall mirror in a frame of carved peacocks and bamboo. Miranda looked into it, wondering what she was doing there. She did not need new clothes. And even if she did, from the look of the dressing room, there was nothing here she could afford.

  Behind her reflection, the saleswoman edged through the curtain, her arm draped with a rainbow of silks. "Shall we begin with the dresses?" She hung them on a brass rod along one wall. "Would you choose which you would like to try first?"

  The colors were vivid and Miranda narrowed her eyes to dim their brightness. "Don't you have anything softer? Something quieter."

  "I do have ivory and pale yellow, but... are those truly what you came looking for?"

  Miranda gave her a quick look. "No," she said after a moment. "I was thinking of..." She stretched out her hand and brushed her palm across the dresses. Her fingers paused at a cherry red one, but there was no way she could imagine herself in that, so, lingeringly, she moved on to a jade